


Clytemnestra at the Bath

by tigerbright



Category: The Oresteia - Aeschylus
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 05:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerbright/pseuds/tigerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clytemnestra is no longer a pawn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clytemnestra at the Bath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Xochiquetzl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xochiquetzl/gifts).



CLYTAEMNESTRA:

Lord husband, I attend you. See, I give your lands into your hand. I did not seek to offend, only to present an accounting; what seemed to you pride and arrogance was neither. We live entitled to taste the fruits of our land, as you have tasted the fruits of Troy. Indeed, by your position, you are entitled to waste the fruit of your own loins.

Ah! You look at me now. To tread on fine draperies, that is offense to the gods, but to slay a young girl, that gives a fine wind, the wind that sends revenge upon a distant city. I envy Helen; she discovered love. I pity Helen; we highborn women are but pawns, and she the highest - and so lowliest - of us all.

Men may be the pawns of gods, but women are the pawns of men. A son? Raise him as a prince, and teach him all he needs to succeed his father. A woman? Use her to forge marriage bonds stronger than any alliance, allow her virtue to be assailed by the gods, lock her away when prophecy decrees... and kill her when the auguries demand it. That woman you bring back from Troy is cursed even more than Helen or I, for she refused the one who gives prophetic gifts.

Cassandra knows all that afflicts your cursèd family; no skeletal secret is safe in her presence. She senses what has come before, she knows what comes next. Our fate was sealed long ere the day a mere mortal shepherd was forced to judge goddesses, for death is in your blood.

Your end comes today, Agamemnon. I suffered ten long years of regency, hiding our son, lying to envoys, holding to a man's power through means that seemed impossible. Yet your kingdom and our son survive.

Our daughter - does not.

Perhaps Apollo, angry at being refused, confused the auguries, and set this chain in motion, bringing his reluctant lover to you, and to me, in this moment.

Perhaps the priests, knowing the likely outcome of their king and warriors departing for a prolonged siege, declared a geas that no sane father would fulfill.

Are you sane, my husband? For I tell you, I have not been sane since that day when you dragged my child from her chamber, from my protecting arms, and slaughtered her for the jealous gods. No, I have lived in cold rage since that day.

Yes, I can wield an axe; a sword too. These years have given me time and need. And you shall feel its bite.

A first blow! A second blow! You lie in blood.

Cassandra, I give you release from your curse. May we meet in a world more kind than this.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta reader Parhelion. And many thanks to Xochiquetzl for putting up a prompt that ate my brain and demanded to be written!


End file.
